Life, Laughter and Everything Else

This is about a girl. The one who sat on the couch, lost in the digital world of her Mac. She caught my eye, partly because no one else did and partly because her black coat and scarf exuded a certain sense of style in contrast to the homeliness of the hostel. When Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment bored me, I stole the occasional glance at her, for nothing awakens the mind like physical beauty. She would still be intently staring at the screen, but that sight was enough, to satisfy and not to excite. Between then and the dinner, I only recall once when she sat the the table next to mine and munched through her lunch, though this time, at close proximity, I dared not turn my face in her direction and be caught stealing glances at her. "The chicken is too big for me." she stated, poking the roasted chicken thigh under the aluminium foil. I used the forceps to lift it and affirm her observation, though devoid of any solution, I helped myself to it. I grabbed a healthy

The world we live in is not the most fertile of grounds for optimism. If the day to day problems were not bad enough, the media has done an excellent job at painting a picture of dystopia and then promoting the very practises of materialism and self-consciousness that has propelled our journey to it. Along the way, certain acts of unexpected generosity (and some 9gag videos) restores our faith in humanity, albeit temporarily, for for every good man, there are 9 idiots, and for every neurone joint we allocate in our brain for remembering the good stuff, we allocate 9 for the bad stuff.   And in the middle of all this, we go by our daily lives, where problems pile up one after the other and the end is as hard to see as someone looking contented on the MRT. We scroll through the list of holiday destinations we can go next to escape from the stale, unchanging present and we loathe every moment when we make our way back home from a refreshing holiday. Next thing to look forward

6 months of non-stop, arduous work. A total absence of any social life. Pressure to deliver results from the start. Weekends burned. As each sentence exited her one by one, I struggled to grasp with the fact that I had got myself into something I had always stood against. Like everyone else, I had wanted to do something I loved, but at the end of the day, work and fun were meant to be mutually exclusive. The purpose of work was to shift dependance away from one's parents to oneself, to be a accepted member of society and most importantly, to subsist. At the end of work, there had to be time for friends, family and Facebook. In the middle of this distress appeared another notion, the notion to be an expert, a professional in my field of work. This meant hard work, the 10 000 hour rule, end to unproductive times and perhaps even work life balance. Though something about this really appealed to me, the idea of simple being really good at what one does. Facebook, Youtube, week

The show was a bit like the Indian Top Gear. The presenter was decked in a white shirt with pink and blue stripes, and faded jeans. He wore non-reflective shades that covered his whole eye. He physique indicated that he was well fed. Most importantly, he had an aura of affluence and style that reflected the aspirations of the modern Indian, the image that the show's Producer was trying to portray. Next to him was the product he was endorsing, a BMW 4 series. He stood by its side, near the front. My mother had the volume on mute so I had to decipher what he was saying from his gestures and which part of the car the camera was focusing on. The camera on its part never stayed still. It focused on the headlights, slowly moving from right to left, trying to highlight the streamlined design and deliberately trying to bring out the craftmanship that went into designing it. The the camera switched to the presenter, who carried on talking from the same location, leg still, but palms sw

It was meant to be just a poster showcase, an event to display our efforts working with an external industrial collaborator, but it was still a milestone, one of the final milestones of what was once purported to be the most fun periods of our life; university. Once all the excitement from the innumerable selfies, the last taupok in uni, all died down and I made my way back home, I was overcome by a huge surge of sorrow, a dawning realisation that it was all going to be over.  Out of nowhere, there was a gaping hole in me that needed filling. Not that I have any regrets about university, similar to the one I had about college. I entered uni with the intention that the rigorous academic life I imposed on myself would not be repeated, but I would take the opportunity to try my hand at anything and everything. Though I struggled initially, I eventually achieved that goal, learning some valuable lessons about life along the way.  However, the greatest achievement about this pe

'Awkward silences' are something that I have grown increasingly conscious off over the past two fewyears. You are in a conversation with one or more friends at one moment and suddenly nobody has anything to say. What follows is the extension of time, when every second feels longer than it is supposed to last. The unease is mutual and everybody knows the other person feels it too. Handphones come out, messages are checked, until someone breaks the silence with a new topic. I have tried to find explanations to this phenomenon, that for some reason I do not remember experiencing before university. Was it due to a lack of openess, where the audience felt obliged to clutch onto their own private thoughts and not share it with anyone else, lest it tarnish their image? Was it due to the growing inability to ask questions about the other, perhaps as a result of a lack of interest in the lives of others? Or was it because we think we know everything there is to know from the person

A friend of mine asked me today why I was not blogging as much as I used to.  "An unwillingness to preach", I replied. Though it was not like this before, before Sweden that is. I am unsure what triggered it, this cessation of will to force my opinion onto others. Perhaps it was the chapter on the philosopher John Locke, during my Engineering Ethics class, that emphasised the individual right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. Something about that resonated with me, mainly the idea that my definition of life and happiness does not and should not extend to everyone else, for what works for me need not work for you. When I lost that strong conviction in the unconventional idea, along with it was gone the inspiration to express that idea.  Not that it led to a dearth of beliefs in me. I still hold steadfast to the same old values that I used to preach, until anyone can prove me wrong. Just that it does not matter to me anymore if you search for